The Heightened Opinion
by TheHop
Summary: In a world where opinion really is everything you are, John Watson has found himself shot down in more ways than one and Sherlock Holmes, an ambivalently tall detective, has completely forgotten what it means to have a "Heightened Opinion".
1. Chapter 1

It's an unfortunate fact of life, a mutation that spread over the whole human race, a piece of evolution gone wrong, a kick in the ass from… God? Mother Nature? A spaghetti monster that lives on the dark side of the moon? Who knows? But it is very real and has been for as long as anyone can remember and despite the various studies no one will give you a straight answer as to why.

Somewhere along the line the human body and the human mind had collaborated and played what was for some a blessing and others a cruel joke. As you aged you grew and you changed, that much was still true. Bones lengthened under muscles that developed and skin stretched to cover the complex structure. Hair grew from fair follicles planted as appropriate with some design, weather intelligent or evolved (whatever pleased you) But at some point, around the age of puberty you stopped. And it all ceased to have anything to do with biology at all.

It became a matter of the mind. Some, more sentimental, called it a matter of the heart. In either case - heart or mind - it became a matter of _fact_ that the more one thought of oneself, the more "height" your self-opinion gained, the more physical height you gained, as if by proxy. And, the more others thought of you, the more physically attractive you became.

The beauty aspect wasn't always radical, although it had been known to happen, sometimes it was just... A subtle shift in the way your eyes shone or your hair fell… it was just something... Something that wordlessly said "I'm special, I'm loved."

It was a part of life, integrated fully into society. Not something worth making a fuss of until a celebrity break up left a once beautiful human being scrabbling for self-respect in a storm of media attention and even then, the storm was well contained inside gossip magazines.

Of course there were prejudices. How could there not be? How can you tell a whole civilisation of supposedly free-thinking beings that they need to be nice to each other and think well of themselves? The best thing to do was to just… carry on. So the world carried on. And such it was carrying on when John Hamish Watson was born in Slough, on the 13th of October, 1978.

Like most babies born to loving parents John was cooed over and cuddled. When he was older, he went to a school where the teachers thought him sweet and polite. He made friends quickly and easily and of course he had Harry, an elder sister who he adored, and who in turn, adored him. For all intents and purposes everyone assumed John Watson would be a perfectly normal and happy boy.

But then, when he was eight, John's mother got very sick and when the tall doctor said the word 'cancer' with that sad look in his eyes, John realised that there were some things that no amount of love could fix.

Elizabeth Watson died in 1986 with nothing that anyone could do for her, nothing John could do for her, except hold her hand and promise it would be okay when they all knew it would never be okay again.

The death of a loved one is a strange thing. Everyone reacts in different ways. But it can so often be the reactions of the people outside of the immediate circle that define how well we get through and for a time, it might have seemed that the accumulated friends John had acquired would see him though well enough. But as his father closed off with grief, and Harry discovered a hiding place in a bottle of clear liquid that dulled the noise, John's friends began to drip away.

Like all children born the same year as him, John stopped growing around 1991. But, unlike most of his classmates, he did not start again for quite some time.

His lack of growth didn't bother him much. It was just a confirmation that he was doomed to be a failure in life. If he couldn't even help his mother he figured he would never be one of the tall beautiful people plastered on billboards and blared on T.V. At school he began to keep to himself, avoiding the sniggers and taunts of the ones who shot up in height to even outgrow the teachers within the space of a few months. People he used to call friends…

After a couple of years, much to John's surprise, there was a shift. When he looked back, it had all started when he was 15. Figuring that, if nothing else, it would do to have some muscle on his side he joined the local rugby club. He threw himself into training, watching with fascination as his scrawny and useless limbs filled out. Burning with a need to understand how and why and how to get faster how to get better and stronger he stopped hiding at school and began to listen, began to study with a purpose. He discovered a gift for biology and it was incredible... It all felt like some sort of second chance, a bright light to the young boy trapped in a house with a father who was shut off and a sister off the rails, a house either too silent or too loud.

If Harry came in yelling at stupid am, he could hide inside a text book, block out the world with facts and figures and formulae... When he'd get home to his father slumped in his chair staring into space and not seeing a thing he could run away without guilt (or at least less guilt) the further his trainers pounded across the concrete streets and council estates of Slough the more out of breath he got the less his head was filled with those empty eyes.

And like a chain reaction other things shifted too, where there had been a void there were people... team mates who called him skilled. Teachers who called him clever... Girls who called him fit...

Gradually, but over the space of a year, John Watson grew a foot in height.

School became his safety net. Good marks meant praise. Praise meant he got to keep the warm and happy feeling that stopped him sinking under what was waiting behind the door of what he reluctantly called home. He worked hard, harder than anyone perhaps and of course they teased him for it, but as the papers came back time and again with shiny little red "A"'s at the top he found he had little care for the teasing, it was like a dripping tap in a bath already full of fond exasperation for the nerdy little rugby star. School was also a means to an end. Somewhere around the 'A grade' O-level in Biology he had decided that one day he was going to be a doctor. He had no illusions about curing cancer but he wanted to save lives. He knew nothing could bring his mother back but maybe if he could give a few people back to their families he could stop the feeling of uselessness that always teetered on the edge of his mind…

It came as a surprise to know one, except John of course, when the medical school acceptance letter arrived from St. Bart's in London. But once it did, over the space of a day, John Watson grew another two inches in height.


	2. Chapter 2

Bart's was different. Of course it was. For one thing, it was far more advanced, much more difficult... Hard work no longer covered it. Now, he had to work hard and then some. Put in ungodly hours. Push himself to limits he didn't know he had. Praise came harder but when it did it felt more rewarding somehow... When he looked in the mirror he might not have seen beauty, but that didn't matter to him. He saw satisfaction. He saw a self he could be proud of, a self who could hold his head high.

John also found that university was a time for more than just work. His weekends quickly filled with parties thrown by people on his hall, trips to local pubs and clubs, drinking games, bar crawls or sometimes just quite beers and late night card games that went on till early hours when you got to chatting with friends...

He got his first 'proper' girlfriend. Her name was Helen. She was a student, studying French in UCL. She wasn't tall. She was actually about the same height as him. But, with a straight-cut, chestnut coloured bob, olive complexion and a smooth heart-shaped face, he thought she was very pretty indeed. She was waitressing in a small coffee shop called "Cup2Go" to pay the bills on her student flat. She'd slipped her number onto the saucer next to his cup of tea one rainy Sunday morning and the rest followed rather predictably.

He took her to the cinema for their first date and when she kissed him goodnight on the steps of her apartment he swore blind he must have just gained another inch...

They were together for 11 very pleasant months before she got offered a place on an exchange trip to Paris and decided they should call it a day. He did not weep for Helen it had been fun while it lasted... but maybe he lost a few centimetres when he waved her plane across the channel.

Three years flew past, graduation day saw him surrounded by newly qualified friends and colleagues and suddenly... Harry... Harry there, clear, bright, smiling eyes, full of pride for her baby brother and arms wrapped very protectively around a pretty blond girl.

And when she let go for a moment to pull him into a tearful embrace that felt like twenty years' worth of apologies, he could see exactly how much she had grown.

Everything was good.

Joining the army didn't feel like a conscious decision to John. It felt like a logical one. If he wanted to save people where better? He wasn't scared of danger. He wasn't even really scared of death. Not that he was brimming with confidence but he supposed he was hoping to acquire confidence by proving himself, in Afghanistan, he could prove himself. And then, a little voice whispered to his ego, he'd be a hero...

Hardened against the training from years of sport and against the generals from years of drunken insults… he powered through. By the time he was 30, he was Captain John Watson of the 5th Northumberland fusiliers, an army surgeon with everything on his side and raring for his first tour of duty.

Afghanistan wasn't like any other place on earth John had ever seen. England faded into a dream like memory as he was confronted with crystalline blue skies painted with purple mountains that shifted in every shade imaginable and orange deserts that seemed to go on forever... Beautiful vistas suddenly ripped apart by land mines and gun fire, stained, spread with blood and drowned out by screams for help... Screams for his help... Suddenly, he was needed and that was the most heightening thing of all was it not?

If you were to ask his colleagues what they remember of Captain John Watson from his first tour of duty, most would probably go so far as to call him a tall man. He was certainly a man who commanded the respect of every single person who met him. For three solid months, in a war-torn desert, he seemed to glow.

Then, he lost someone.

He had seen people die before... at Bart's. He'd shadowed doctors and surgeons, talked through patients with them as they coughed up blood or went under scalpels. Watched them snap away in the blink of an eye or slowly fade into the steady beep on a heart monitor. Grown women, little old men, teenagers... children even... He'd seen RTC fatalities, suicides, drunken accidents, broken necks, AIDs suffers, blunt trauma, malaria, knife crime, surgery gone wrong, or too late... Cancer patients…

But it turned out, nothing could have prepared him for seeing that life slip away under his hands in a foreign desert, where the wind kicked up the alien dust and he could barely hear the soldier's last breathes over the roar of artillery.

His name had been Billy and he was 26.

John Watson shrank three whole inches when they took his body away.

Outside he seemed a hardening soldier. Inside he felt eight years old all over again.

It didn't sting so much the next time, or the next, or the next... And there were still all the ones who lived, and went home or back into the field... But still, every fatality meant something, sometimes just a millimetre, and millimetres add up.


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: Hi :) Just wanted to say thank you to everyone who's read, followed, favourited and reviewed! (notice the exclamation mark :P must be important) And thank you for sticking with this, it is going somewhere, I promise.  
I'm quite terrible at this sort of thing, but I really do appreciate it, so I hope you continue to enjoy :) **

John's first tour ended just before Christmas. His plan was to go and spend it with Harry and the blonde girl (whose name was Clara). They'd gotten married while he was away. He'd been sad to miss it and treasured the photos of his sister looking so beautiful and happy. Hands, clasped with a woman who made her feel a thousand foot tall and told her she was the most special thing in the world.

Sometimes, he'd look at his life over the last 20 years and wonder if he should be jealous of his sister. She'd done well out of life really… When it came down to it, she was happy, she had a job and a beautiful wife, when he was out fighting for his country… fighting for his life most days… He'd spent years in education and training, putting in the dedication and sleepless nights, while somehow, it had all just slipped into place for Harry. Was it really worth it? Living in a burnt out, brittle, war zone? Getting close to people you could, and did, lose in a heartbeat? Never making time for relationships? Hardly staying in touch with old friends...?

Whilst his love for the army was still real, despite everything, he was only human and yes, maybe he was a little jealous of those people like Harry and Clara who got to lead normal lives…

Oh, but the _thrill_… The rush of adrenaline when he was running for his life… The way he could always feel his heart hammering against his chest, telling him he was alive… _That_ was really living.

Not that the break wasn't appreciated. England was still his home after all. He missed real tea and sleeping in a proper bed. He missed making breakfast in the mornings with the radio on in the background. And, if he was honest, he missed Harry. He missed the Harry that he'd looked up to as a child, the one he'd adored and who had adored him. And now she was off the drink and on her feet, it all felt so possible, to John, that he could get back a family he thought he lost when he was eight.

He set off home with a smile that lasted until the second he arrived.

Even if it wasn't so blatantly obvious from the inches they'd lost and the way their eyes had dimmed, there was a row over dinner which resulted in Harry taking a bottle of wine and vanishing for three hours.

Clara broke down on John's shoulder. Then, they played scrabble and opened a tin of 'Quality Street', sipped their way through a bottle of port and didn't talk about it.

When the port was gone John put on an old re-run of Top-of-the-pops to try to fill the silence. But, the sight of the tall, beautiful pop stars prancing around made him feel queasy. So he turned it off, and they sat watching the clock instead.

Harry came home at 2am.

Clara wouldn't speak to her.

John and Harry had a row.

Clara walked out.

John sat with Harry for the rest of the night while she threw up in a bucket and cried into his chest.

The next morning he left without a word.

The second tour of duty felt like a bloody blessing in disguise.

John laughed at himself sometimes. He must be a psychologists dream. How many people saw gunfire as an escape? He knew it was probably a bit twisted... But he put it in the same place as the "I know I've killed people" thought. The sort of thought you don't linger on because it turns your brain inside out and you have to start distancing yourself, think of yourself as a separate person... Not I, but _He_.

I didn't kill that person. Captain Watson killed that person…

When you join the army, at some point, it's pretty much a given that you'll have a loaded gun in your hands and the order to shoot it.

Even for a doctor.

He spent a lot of time saving lives , but when that gun was in his hands and it was 'kill or be killed' he did what was expected. He was considered a crack shot as it happened, never a shake in his hand or a moment of hesitation. His battalion knew he had their backs 100% and that kind of trust meant an awful lot. It felt surprisingly safe. So he let it become the puppet stings that held him up.

Then one day, not any specifically special day, there was a hot sun in the sky as usual, a few thin clouds. And there was a man on the ground.

The man was bleeding. It wasn't fatal, not yet. John could save him.

There was the sound of a chopper approaching and the muttering of assurances that it would be fine, they would make it to safety...

But then, there were other shouts, shouts to get down, get out, and get back to base…

And it was someone else with a gun in their hands, someone else with the order to fire. And apparently their hands didn't shake all that much either, because the bullet found its mark.

Found its mark right in John's left shoulder.

The man bleeds out on the Afghan sand.

The chopper lands, but it's too late.

As John Watson's vision goes blurry the last thing he sees is another life he couldn't save.


	4. Chapter 4

Several years before John Watson was shot in Afghanistan, another, entirely different man realised something very important.

It didn't matter.

He didn't matter.

No one else mattered.

In the grand scheme of things he found he was, but a speck, in an indeterminably big inverse that was forever changing and expanding. He knew he would live for about 80 years, barring fatal illness, incident or accident, and then then he would die. Once he was dead it didn't matter much what would happen because he would have no concept of approval, or, indeed, disapproval, about the whole affair.

Because the man in question was only thirteen at the point of this realisation he simply went about his business, and without giving it much thought continued to grow and change at a perfectly average rate. He grew, steadily, to what he found an acceptable height. But then, he stopped.

When looking in a mirror himself, the boy found his features to be adequate. And was only pleased they all served their purpose in a fully functionally capacity, most of the time. If he was so inclined, he could have drawn biological similarities between his mother, father and elder brother. And that, to him, was that.

But the infuriating thing was, to everybody else, that was _not_ that at all.

Everybody else seemed to have decided to spend their whole lives trying to convince themselves that they did matter. And because of a little freak of nature he was supposed to listen to all their damned opinions and let them dictate everything about him.

"Sometimes," his elder, pompous, and incredibly tall, brother had said to him when he broached the subject, "you need to look at the bigger picture. You may not care now what people think of you, but someday you might _need_ their respect."

But the boy did not think he would ever care to have anybody's respect, for any purpose. He had no care for human opinion. In fact, it was an increasing nuisance to him, because, as far as the human race was concerned, it was the be all and end all of any and every subject and every conversation, especially as he got older.

To him it didn't matter what anyone looked like. Truth be told, he avoided contact with people in general, when he became an adult and doing so was feasible. Surely, that was why they all had mobile phones these days?

Who cared how tall someone was or how pretty they thought they were? It was all just data.

People were boring. And they, and their petty opinions, seemed determined to make everything else boring too.

In 2005, the thirteen year old boy was no longer a boy at all. He was a man, and he looked at the world and found it severely lacking. If nothing mattered, if he didn't matter and no one else mattered, then what was the harm in losing himself?

He saw everything so clearly... It felt like the rest of humanity was walking around with their eyes closed while he was forced to watch them bump into things. Knowing they would only resent him for yelling "watch out".

And he'd tried. He'd _tried_ to shout out anyway. When the world saw an accident in a swimming pool, he saw a pair of missing shoes and he _tried _to tell them.

But nobody cared. No one was listening. No one _wanted _to listen.

So he gave up.

It started with cigarettes and alcohol because they were easy to get hold of.

It ended with a cocaine overdose in a bathroom of a house he couldn't remember entering, because nothing was ever enough.

The day Mycroft Holmes found his little brother, curled up and shaking, his pale skin practically translucent in the flickering electric light it took every ounce of his self-control not shrink into himself on the damp tiles next to him and weep at how much he had failed.

Instead he distanced himself, put all his feelings on a low light and took every moment as it came. The only goal – make damn sure no one died that day.

Five years later he was still trying. Watching a pair of grey eyes that saw everything so clearly at the age of thirteen, turn even colder, turn to regard the world with contempt.

Sherlock Holmes was getting by, but he'd put himself on auto-pilot a long time ago. _Nothing_ mattered, not to him.


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: Hello there, as usual here is a forwarning of my awfulness when it comes to writing these things, but just a few points before the next chapter, please bear with me.  
1. THANK YOU - You lovely people who are still reading and following. Extra thanks to the new followers, favourite-ers and the very kind review. I'm sorry I never reply to reviews, I'm not brilliant at personal messages I'm afraid... but I really do appriciate it, you deserve cake :)  
2. SORRY - updates are about to become slower because I have to go back to college and I have exams coming up :(  
**

A short man is sitting on a park bench in North London. His back is straight, mostly from habit even though it makes a healing bullet wound in his left shoulder stiffen and ache a little. The coffee he doesn't remember buying has gone cold in its cardboard cup. A metal crutch rests against a leg that pains him for reasons he wishes he didn't understand.

Sometimes when he closes his eyes he still hears the rattle of machine guns.

Sometimes he wakes up short of breath. Dreams of shouts for help fading, till he can't remember their voices anymore and it's all just noise.

It leaves a dull ache in his chest.

His sister's phone is in his pocket, where he put it that morning. He isn't quite sure why he's bothering to carry it. No one calls or texts him except her, but he doesn't know how to speak to her any more so he never picks up, or replies.

After a time John gets up from the bench. He dumps the coffee in the bin at the gate of the park, his mind is wandering back to thoughts of the rent that's due on his pokey little bedsit, the rent he would have scorned not being able to pay this time last year, when he is pulled from his reverie by a voice he hasn't heard for many years.

"John? John Watson!"

Mike Stamford is shorter than the last time John saw him, broader too. His hair is starting to grey, prematurely, at the roots. They shake hands but John finds he has no idea what to say to the man he shared classes with hardly ten years ago, a man he got drunk with and laughed with. He can see the awkward sympathy and confusion in his eyes as he looks down at him.

"I heard you were off somewhere, getting shot at. What happened?" The question is heavy with a thousand other's that he doesn't want to ask but wants to know and it makes the back of Johns neck prickle with uncomfortable heat. He already has a therapist (for all the good _she's_ doing him) he doesn't need another bleeding heart pitying him for not being good enough.

"I got shot." he replies tersely.

The subject is not discussed further. Stamford offers him another cup of coffee. John accepts to be polite. But the coffee is bitter and the conversation is tense.

Mike's trying to be light-hearted. He's got a glimmer of the old goofy grin he used to sport. John begins to wish he had been rude and gone home because he can't do this and the silent realisation presses on his chest. He answers his questions and tries not to grit his teeth.

"Doesn't sound like the John Watson I remember" Mike says jovially when he expresses the possibility he's going to have to leave London.

Isn't he? John isn't sure how different he feels since those happy days, oh so many years ago. That John Watson couldn't believe his luck, felt like he was flying… felt like his whole world had clicked into place by accident while he was looking the other way. That John Watson was desperate not to get crushed down, not to fall, so he fought to get higher and higher, clung to what he had tighter and tighter.

This John Watson was short and useless and has fallen regardless…

"No" he thinks, then before he can stop himself word bubble up in his mouth like bile "I'm not the John Watson you-" he spits out, but loses heart halfway the sentence. Mike looks hurt and it stings. He swallows thickly and takes a sip of coffee to try and fill the awkward silence that follows.

"Get yourself a flat share?" Mike suggests cautiously, the bright tone still just hanging on.

The thought has crossed his mind before. It would make his life easier. He doesn't want to leave London. It's more like home than anywhere else, even if it still feels… wrong.

But who would flat-share with him now? He doesn't have any friends, they all faded away with Afghanistan, he went home, and they stayed there. The ones he had before he left are like Mike now. Different people, people he doesn't know anymore, people who don't know him.

He forces a self-deprecating chuckle.

"Who'd want to share a flat with me?"

There's a rueful smile on Mike's lips when he replies and before he knows it they're walking through the doors of St. Bart's.

The thing that annoyed Sherlock about Molly Hooper was that she was tiny. She was the typical example of a human being, one of the ones who let every single remark resonate in them and affect every damn thing about her.

It didn't matter that she was clearly a well-educated woman who had secured herself a well-paid and moderately important position.

When he looked at her he didn't see that. He saw a desperate little girl who was still blaming herself for her father's death, even though there was almost certainly nothing she could have done. He saw a naïve, infatuated, young woman who hung off his every word and would probably have walked in front of a train if he told her he'd noticed her hair cut.

Getting access to Bart's morgue was easy.

They had long since ceased to bother throwing him out and let Molly indulge in showing her shiny crush a few cadavers once in a while. What was it to them if a few bits and pieces vanished to one of his "experiments"? After all, the dead don't tend to complain and it kept him reasonably quiet.

He was musing on the latest "experiment" in one of the labs that wasn't infested with annoying, breathing medical students when Mike arrived.

He was with an old colleague or fellow student. Well, he had to give Mike credit for speed, he had mentioned the idea of flatmates only that morning, and so much was obvious.

But as the other man came into full view, Sherlock rolled his eyes from behind the microscope he was peering into.

He was like Molly.

He had no time for people like that.

But then again…

He was holding an aluminium crutch.

Holding it.

He'd limped in.

There was a pronounced limp in his left leg.

It must be painful.

But now he wasn't even leaning on his crutch at all.

Now, that _was _interesting.

He graced the stranger with another glance.

Hair-cut, eyes, shoes, shirt, tan…

Army doctor…

Oh there was more to this man's height than silly little Molly Hooper.

A small unconscious smile tugged involuntarily at the detective's mouth.

"Afghanistan or Iraq?"


End file.
